Posts Tagged ‘unpredictable’

It’s a blast from the past, and so much has changed since then. Needless to say, Brett fell by the wayside, I lost interest, we lost touch. He came out and said he had ADHD, and then I never heard from him for 9 months – within which a lot happened to change my life for the extreme better. I have totally moved on.

Then a couple of weeks, Hannah, Toby and I are in town and I see him with his friends. I just wave and say hi and we go on our way. Flash forward to today. I am in Starbucks having a coffee and fiddling with my iPod, waiting for Toby and Nick to arrive so we can go and have lunch at Nandos. Brett comes and taps me on the shoulder, and we have a brief conversation and catch up – more about him than about me. He is there with his “friend” (date? sugar daddy? the guy is at least 30; Brett is younger than me.) whom he sends to wait in the queue to get him a glass of water – he doesn’t like coffee. At this point, I’ll mention that next to my laptop is a big mug of black filter 😉

Brett admitted he could have used the coffee to wake him up, as he was “tired” – I guess he was extremely tired, because if his eyes had been red I would have sworn he was stoned. It’s 11am, a bit early for weed or whatever drug he’s taken? Perhaps I’m being mean, it’s quite possibly the ADHD medication that is making him really spaced out. But when I mentioned he’d changed his hair from when I saw him a couple of weeks ago, he claimed it was just “wax / gel”. Okay, but I’m not colourblind, and it was ginger the other week; it’s now black! And to top it off, if the ADHD medication was what had made him sluggish, how come he had the impetus to put his hand on my thigh for a moment? Is that just being friendly? It seemed quite flirtatious to me, and I bit my tongue from mentioning that a) you’re here with your “friend” (who, incidentally, gave me side-eye as they left the café – insecure much?) so perhaps he might get annoyed if you flirt with me? and b) I have a boyfriend now whom I love and I am certainly not going back a year in time to deal with all your mixed signals and unpredictability.

If I sound like I’m being mean, I don’t mean to be – it’s nice to see Brett and know that he’s ok. We don’t have any animosity towards each other, which is good – I mean, why should we? Things just fizzled out naturally and we drifted apart more or less happily. But at the same time, the whole experience made me go “HUH?” Like, what just happened? 10 minutes later, Toby and Nick turned up and life resumed its normal course. But the whole experience just served to show me how far I have come, how much better my life is one year on. And although I used to say that being single was good in that it had freedom, I love having a boyfriend for many reasons – one of which is that I don’t have to navigate the dating scene! It’s so exhausting chasing after people, being chased after, playing a constant power game. I was with Toby the other day and I was saying that although we’ve had a couple of big talks and the need to realign ourselves at times so we’re on the same page, we never played hard-to-get games with each other. I liked him, he liked me, so we spent more time together. The more time we spent together, the more we liked each other, and so our relationship grew. There was no pretending, no hidden agenda on that front – even if we had our insecurities, we knew we liked each other and so we gravitated towards being together happily. Why is it so rare for a courtship to proceed in that kind of orderly manner? It’s like in modern life, we expect things to be more complicated and if they aren’t, we’re almost tempted to make them so. Well, my life is busy enough, interesting enough and problematic enough without me adding extra complications to it, and I love Toby for the fact that he says and does what he means. I try to be the same.

Unwittingly, Brett has made me realise how lucky I am to have Toby. Thanks!

Alright, so every night more or less when I go to sleep, I have one of my epic, insane dreams. It’s almost fun going to bed and wondering what I’m going to dream about; it’s unpredictable, except for the fact that usually Mike will figure in there somewhere (and my parents often play the antagonists). My dreams are lively and exciting, and I almost feel sorry for people who always say “I dreamed I was flying / falling / being chased…” – my inner response is “Yeah, and so did everyone else. Did you go to Brazil with your supermodel boyfriend? Did you elope with a guy from HMV during your friend’s wedding? Did you eat pastries with Charlotte from SaTC before rafting along a bayou towards Oxford and the end of the world? No you didn’t, did you.” But sometimes, my dreams are quite disturbing, so I guess it’s all a fair trade… still, I get some good stories! So I’m going to blog my dreams from the last two nights now (in theory this should cut down the amount that I write so the entry is not epically long!), and then I’m gonna attempt briefly to psychoanalyse what I think some of the salient points are… feel free to throw in your two pence!

Friday night

I don’t remember how it all started, but I was somehow dating this teenager (I am not sure if I was the same age I am now, but I know that I was older and that he was a bit young…) and we ended up going to his house and hanging out before meeting his family (parents, brother, dog). Everything was cool, and there was some sort of swimming pool / water soaker element to the visit, but nothing sexual happened. Then I was suddenly going to college (not with my new boyfriend) and lots of people from my old school were there too. I was attending class when all of a sudden, my old boss from when I worked at the school bookstore asked me if I could carry this heavy box of books to Oxfam on Colston Avenue (for the record, in real life there is no Oxfam on Colston Avenue, and Colston Avenue was nowhere near wherever this college was meant to be). So I recruited this fat ginger girl called Siobhan to help me carry the box.

We were about to leave college when a teacher accosted us and demanded that we attend his lesson. Siobhan and I tried to explain that we had to carry this box to Oxfam but he wasn’t having any of it and marched us to his lesson, which appeared to take place in the college cafe / dining hall, and consisted of us watching a video on a projector screen set up in the middle. For the life of me I can’t remember what the video was about, but ultimately I forgot about Siobhan and the box, and I ended up chatting to a couple of girls with whom I was sat watching the video. Once the video finished, everyone was chatting and joking and being generally sixth-form-esque. One of my massive crushes from school, Richard Hooper (who, according to Facebook, is still a hottie but needs to do some urgent manscaping), was there and looked ridiculously hot in a vest / shirtless, but much more muscled and tattooed than in real life. I was gazing at him, when another guy from our year (on whom I didn’t have a crush, although there was a nasty rumour at one point) wandered by to talk to Rich, and he was buff but kinda fat (this is going to sound really horrid but according to Facebook, that is how he now looks in real life!). Odder than that however was the fact that he had actual bird wings sprouting from his shoulders (and not impressive sweeping wings, but wings like that of an owl or falcon) which looked a bit weedy and a bit weird. That’s all that I remember, I don’t remember what happened to the box, my teenage boyfriend or if I ever got close to Rich, but it was interesting if bizarrely anti-climactic!

Saturday night

Ok, so I think that I am coming in midway through the dream here, but somehow I ended up (along with various friends from university on my course, and Rihanna!) at Mike’s house. Except it wasn’t Mike’s actual house, but some house that resembled my nan’s house slightly, except it was halfway through being built. A couple of the upstairs rooms had massive gaps in the ceiling, and there was a staircase that ended halfway before hitting the floor. So we were all at Mike’s house, except Mike and V had gone off somewhere because Mike had to drive her somewhere. I remember getting really antsy and moody, and despite my friends and Rihanna’s efforts to calm me down and make me enjoy their fun, I was storming off around Mike’s house, which at times involved me jumping down off the end of the unfinished staircase, and watching some of the builders (of which there were oddly few) working on the upstairs attic.

At one point, I found a ticket to see a random music act (whom I don’t think exists in real life) and they were playing in Mike’s attic. I watched them, but nobody came to join me or even seemed to register that there was music going on. Eventually, the group (indie/pop girl group playing guitars) finished their set and I wandered off, dismayed that Mike and V had not yet returned, and I couldn’t stop my mind from spazzing out. I rejoined my friends downstairs, except suddenly I realised that we were all going to exchange presents, and more people were coming and I hadn’t brought their Christmas presents with me. My parents and grandmother were flying back from Australia and were due to have just landed, so I called them to ask if they could swing by our house and bring the other extra Christmas presents, but I got no answer on the phone so my mood didn’t lift. Night fell, and I remember playing some kind of graphically-improved Mortal Kombat (the original game) to distract myself and funnel my annoyance into a harmless violent pursuit, but even that didn’t help.

Suddenly my friends started to bustle and move towards the door. I remember I had been hiding upstairs in this alcove, laying on the floor staring at the ceiling when suddenly this girl (one of the builders, although she now was dressed in normal clothes) walked past and I startled her. She told me to cheer up and go downstairs, as everyone was back. Mike and V were downstairs but I walked past them, now more concerned with whether my parents had brought my presents. They were outside with my nan, waiting for me, and their hands were empty. I remember being upset, explaining I had tried to call them, explaining how embarrassed I was (and fearing that now I had no chance of competing with V for Mike’s affections, despite the fact I already felt that I had lost the battle) and how they had failed me. In short, I was acting like a spoiled brat and alienating everyone, but I couldn’t stop myself – my mother yawned (obviously flying back from Australia had been somewhat tiring) and I remember saying that “Well now I’m going to stay here ALL NIGHT and you’re going to have to WAIT FOR ME, see how you like THAT.” My nan and dad just stood there semi-shocked, semi-appalled, and my mother held out a drink to me – she was apparently drunk. I took the glass and tossed the cloudy white-yellow liquid (limoncello? although normally it’s not that creamy) into the plants in my tantrum. My friends had turned to see Mike and chat and drink, ignoring / oblivious to my mood, my anger at my family and my failure to bring all the gifts, and I tried to join in the crowd and put on a happy / brave face, but I felt like I had disappointed everyone, I realised that I had acted like a fool, and I felt that Mike had no reason ever to pay me any attention again. Mike and V smiled at me, but I couldn’t return their smile as I felt inferior, unwanted by them, and I think then I must have woken up.

Analysis

I seem to be looking to latch onto anyone to date / distract me from my infatuation with Mike, but it never seems to do any good. The relationships disappear, or the real hot guys are never interested in (or even notice) me. When I get around Mike, he always seems to drop me for someone else and I always feel guilty or take the blame. I can’t control my moods and I end up alienating everyone – even though Mike and I are supposed to be the couple, I’m never quite good enough to hold onto him and he always goes away or finds someone else.

I often dream about people from school, or being back in a school environment – I guess that’s because it’s such a formative experience, but going back there would scare me and also return me to my feelings of inferiority and confusion that I experienced during my adolescence. My moodiness and loneliness in my dreams I guess reflects on my fear of losing my maturity, or my insecurities being exposed and everyone turning against me.

Context-wise, my nan is currently in Australia (although my parents are not) and I’ve been missing her terribly, feeling that I have nowhere to turn when living with my parents gets too much. On NYE, I was flirting with someone younger than me, although he wasn’t a teenager it reminded me of last year when I did date a teenager and it didn’t really work – somehow, NYE felt similarly inappropriate and that I was lowering myself. The fact that “Rich” was super buff and tattooed also relates to NYE, as there were some hotties at the club who looked exactly that way (they were in fact a bit overdone, but still not bad). I also found out that Mike and V went to the cinema last night (with their spouses) which probably explains their presence in the dream – although me and Mike already met up once this holiday and I’m staying at his on Monday night (and seeing him a lot next week for uni), I can’t shake off my feelings of inferiority. Which I really, really need to get over! But in dreams, I guess that we see ourselves without being able to control how we act. Throw in your two pence!